Tag Archives: Pfizer

“They’ve bought off the cops, they’ve bought off the politicians, and their power is growing every day.” [AND they have also drugged the doctors, cops & politicians!]

So Remember: “Every time you go to your doctor demanding Concerta or Lunesta or once-daily Singulair, you’re fueling a dangerous $350 billion industry that kills thousands of innocent people each year,” said John, it’s a Georgetown University sociologist who specializes in prescription drug-related crime.”

NEW YORK—In the latest of an increasingly violent series of murders linked to international prescription drug trafficking, infamous Pfizer cartel leader Philip “El Loco” Cox was gunned down Thursday by rivals from the Bristol-Myers Squibb organization, the FBI has confirmed.

The 63-year-old Pfizer boss, who became the nation’s top pharma kingpin after the 2009 toppling of Wyeth ringleader Richard Russell, was reportedly shot five times in the chest by sales reps from Bristol-Myers Squibb, part of an ongoing turf war to control the lucrative pharmaceutical market.

“The murder of El Loco is a direct result of the escalating struggle over supply routes and territory between Pfizer and the Squibbs,” said FBI spokesman Jeff Lyons, using the nickname given to the rival cartel’s operatives, who allegedly woke Cox up in the middle of the night and killed him in front of his wife and children. “From lipid-lowering agents like Crestor to hard diabetes drugs like Avandia, everybody’s using this stuff, some of them as young as 35 or 40. The market’s worth billions, and it’s a bloody business.”

“Prescription drug traffickers are no longer just sending their reps into clinics to pressure doctors,” Lyons added. “Now they’re kidnapping the ones who don’t prescribe their product, decapitating them, and rolling their heads through hospital hallways.”

THURSDAY’S KILLING COMES JUST DAYS AFTER THE DISCOVERY OF HUMAN REMAINS BELONGING TO ELI LILLY EMPLOYEES WHOSE BODIES HAD BEEN VICIOUSLY DISFIGURED, DISEMBOWELED, AND DUMPED IN A MASS GRAVE OUTSIDE INDIANAPOLIS. THE CORPSES WERE REPORTEDLY ONLY IDENTIFIABLE AFTER AUTHORITIES FOUND A SCRAP OF A POLO SHIRT NEARBY BEARING THE CARTEL’S CORPORATE INSIGNIA.

“El Loco” Cox’s murder is believed to have resulted from a long-running dispute over heart-medication distribution cells in the Northeast, where in the past year at least 500 people have been killed as the warring syndicate’s fight to push Lipitor and Pravachol, their rival products. However, the FBI told reporters that revenge might also have played a role.

“The Bureau believes this assassination may have been ordered as an act of retaliation by the Fat Man himself,” said Lyons, referring to the notorious “pharmo” Doug Kirkendall, who is currently head of marketing at Bristol-Myers Squibb. “Last year, his wife was found hanging from a telephone pole and smeared with a prescription-only topical psoriasis cream—the signature threat of the Pfizer cartel.”

According to law enforcement officials, the blow to Pfizer could create an opening for the New Jersey-based Merck and Johnson & Johnson cartels to move in and expand their operations. Both groups have lately recruited more biochemical engineers, drug marketers, and family doctors into their ranks, with Merck burning down several Walgreens pharmacies in October following a pricing dispute.

Many experts have argued that responsibility for the violence ultimately lies with U.S. consumers, whose insatiable demand for designer drugs has made big pharma so incredibly profitable.

“Every time you go to your doctor demanding Concerta or Lunesta or once-daily Singulair, you’re fueling a dangerous $350 billion industry that kills thousands of innocent people each year,” said John Cotts, a Georgetown University sociologist who specializes in prescription-drug-related crime. “They’ve bought off the cops, they’ve bought off the politicians, and their power is growing every day.”

After working as an expert in school shootings for the past two decades I have to disagree with the idea that school shootings are a gun problem or a bully problem. The world should have been able to see that after Josh Powell set his home on fire with him & his two children inside. There are many ways to kill if you are determined to do so.

There are prescription drugs on the market that produce both homicidal & suicidal ideation – which means the drugs produce ruminating thoughts of killing others or themselves coupled with ruminating thoughts of various methods of killing. Those medications are marketed as antidepressants.

The following is a link to a statement by Michael Moore after doing to movie Bowling for Columbine where they focused on the guns. You will see he has changed his mind about the guns & now knows it was the antidepressants that caused Columbine:

If it were you or I or your neighbor down the street you can
bet that NO presecutor on the planet would “look the other way” to avoidprosecution. But, when it involves the lergest drug company on the planet they
seem to be able to do just that and do it VERY WELL!!!

So, before going into the amazing facts in this most recent
case let me give you a reminder of the last big case involving a large fine for
off label marketing with Pfizer‘s Neurontin. After learning that Pfizer sales
reps had been drastically increasing profits by pushing Neurontin for off label
uses for several years felony charges were filed against the company for
doing so. (Keep in mind that this drug now carries warnings of increases in
suicide.) In 2004 they plead guilty to two felonies and agreed to pay $430
Million in fines as well. See the first article below as a quick
overview.

Now they have a whole new twist when it comes to approaching
similar charges with the off label prescribing of Bextra (Pfizer‘s version of
Vioxx) which was pulled from the market just the following year after pleading
guilty to the two felonies in the Neurontin case and paying the largest fine
ever for such a practice. Pfizer acquired a smaller drug company
called Pharmacia and they wanted to market Bextra for surgical pain.
When the FDA put their foot down and clearly said, “NO because of safety
issues,” Pfizer and Pharmacia went right ahead with their marketing campaign. So
when caught red handed in doing this, the prosecutor decides that Pharmacia can
plead guilty so that Pfizer is off the hook because it would have put them out
of business!!!!!

I quote from the article below: “So Pfizer and the feds cut a deal. Instead
of charging Pfizer with a crime, prosecutors would charge a Pfizer subsidiary,
Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc.

“The CNN Special Investigation found that the subsidiary is nothing more than
a shell company whose only function is to plead guilty.”

As it turned out ONE HALF of their $1.7 Billion in profits on Bextra came
from off label prescribing and the government fine for that will be
the biggest ever once again. This time the figure is $1.2 Billion plus an
additional $1Billion to settle a batch of civil suits (how many deaths those
involved is not mentioned) and denied wrongdoing in another dozen
similar charges involving illegal promotions!

“It paid nearly $1.2 billion in a criminal fine for Bextra, the largest fine
the federal government has ever collected.

“It paid a billion dollars more to settle a batch of civil suits — although
it denied wrongdoing — on allegations that it illegally promoted 12 other
drugs.”

This begins to make one wonder just how far we will get with changes in
government policy when they have learned how to extract such large sums of money
from these drug companies in the way of fines. Why are those fines not
distributed to those who were damaged by the off label prescribing?

A division of Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drugmaker, has agreed to plead
guilty to two felonies and pay $430 million in penalties to settle charges that
it fraudulently promoted the drug Neurontin for a string of unapproved uses.

In an agreement announced by government prosecutors Thursday, Pfizer unit
Warner-Lambert admitted that it aggressively marketed the epilepsy drug by

A company whistle-blower, whose 1996 civil suit spurred
government investigations of Neurontin’s marketing campaign, will receive about
$26.6 million through the settlement under legal provisions that reward citizens
for helping to recover government money obtained byfraud.

The settlement includes $152 million to pay back amounts spent on Neurontinby the federal Medicare program and 50 state Medicaid programs for the poor. In
addition, Pfizer will pay a $240 million criminal fine, the second-largest such

fine ever imposed in a health care fraudprosecution, the Department of Justice
said.

Prosecutors said Warner-Lambert turned Neurontin into a blockbuster drug with
tactics like paying doctors to listen to pitches for unapproved uses and
treating them to luxury trips to Hawaii, Florida or the 1996 Olympics in
Atlanta. One doctor received almost $308,000 to tout Neurontin at conferences.

“This illegal and fraudulent promotion scheme corrupted the information
process relied on by doctors in their medical decision making, thereby putting
patients at risk,” said U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan, chief prosecutor for the
federal district based in Boston.

Doctors are free to prescribe drugs for uses not specified on their FDA-
approved labels, but the FDA forbids drug companies from promoting them for
those off-label uses. Prosecutors said Neurontin’s manufacturers decided not to
seek an expanded FDA label for the drug, an expensive process requiring solid
proof from clinical trials. Instead, the company boosted sales through
aggressive promotional strategies, even when scientific studies had demonstrated
that it was not effective, the Justice Department said.

The tactics included planting company operatives in the audience at medical
education events to contradict unfavorable comments about Neurontin, and paying
doctors to allow sales representatives to sit in on patient visits, prosecutors
said.

Feds found Pfizer too big to nail

Imagine being charged with a crime, but an imaginary friend takes the rap for
you. That is essentially what happened when Pfizer, the world’s largest
pharmaceutical company, was caught illegally marketing Bextra, a painkiller that
was taken off the market in 2005 because of safety concerns. When the criminal case was announced last fall, federal
officials touted their prosecution as a model for tough, effective enforcement.
“It sends a clear message” to the pharmaceutical industry, said Kevin Perkins,
assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division.

But beyond the fanfare, a CNN Special Investigation found another story, one
that officials downplayed when they declared victory. It’s a story about the
power major pharmaceutical companies have even when they break the laws intended
to protect patients.

Big plans for Bextra

The story begins in 2001, when Bextra was about to hit the market. The drug
was part of a revolutionary class of painkillers known as Cox-2 inhibitors that
were supposed to be safer than generic drugs, but at 20 times the price of
ibuprofen.

Pfizer and its marketing partner, Pharmacia, planned to sell Bextra as a
treatment for acute pain, the kind you have after surgery.

But in November 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Bextra was
not safe for patients at high risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The FDA approved Bextra only for arthritis and menstrual cramps. It rejected
the drug in higher doses for acute, surgical pain.

Promoting drugs for unapproved uses can put patients at risk by circumventing
the FDA’s judgment over which products are safe and effective. For that reason,
“off-label” promotion is against the law.

If we prosecute Pfizer … a lot of the people who work for the company who
haven’t engaged in criminal activity would get hurt.

–Mike Loucks, federal prosecutor But with billions of dollars of profits at
stake, marketing and sales managers across the country nonetheless targeted
anesthesiologists, foot surgeons, orthopedic surgeons and oral surgeons. “Anyone
that use[d] a scalpel for a living,” one district manager advised in a document
prosecutors would later cite.

A manager in Florida e-mailed his sales reps a scripted sales pitch that
claimed — falsely — that the FDA had given Bextra “a clean bill of health” all
the way up to a 40 mg dose, which is twice what the FDA actually said was
safe.

Doctors as pitchmen

Internal company documents show that Pfizer and Pharmacia (which Pfizer later
bought) used a multimillion-dollar medical education budget to pay hundreds of
doctors as speakers and consultants to tout Bextra.

Pfizer said in court that “the company’s intent was pure”: to foster a legal
exchange of scientific information among doctors.

But an internal marketing plan called for training physicians “to serve as
public relations spokespeople.”

According to Lewis Morris, chief counsel to the inspector general at the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, “They pushed the envelope so far past
any reasonable interpretation of the law that it’s simply outrageous.”

Pfizer’s chief compliance officer, Doug Lanker, said that “in a large sales
force, successful sales techniques spread quickly,” but that top Pfizer
executives were not aware of the “significant mis-promotion issue with Bextra”
until federal prosecutors began to show them the evidence.

By April 2005, when Bextra was taken off the market, more than half of its

$1.7 billion in profits had come from prescriptions written for uses the FDA had
rejected.

Too big to nail

But when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the
pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street
were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail.

Why? Because any company convicted of a major health care fraud is
automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid. Convicting Pfizer on Bextra
would prevent the company from billing federal health programs for any of its
products. It would be a corporate death sentence.

Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer’s
collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products
to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those ofPfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant
losses for Pfizer shareholders.

“We have to ask whether by excluding the company [from Medicare and
Medicaid], are we harming our patients,” said Lewis Morris of the Department of
Health and Human Services.

So Pfizer and the feds cut a deal. Instead of charging Pfizer with a crime,
prosecutors would charge a Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co.
Inc.

The CNN Special Investigation found that the subsidiary is nothing more than
a shell company whose only function is to plead guilty.

Public records show that the subsidiary was incorporated in Delaware on March
27, 2007, the same day Pfizer lawyers and federal prosecutors agreed that the
company would plead guilty in a kickback case against a company Pfizer had
acquired a few years earlier.

As a result, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., the subsidiary, was excluded
from Medicare without ever having sold so much as a single pill. And Pfizer was
free to sell its products to federally funded health programs.

An imaginary friend

I can tell you, unequivocally, that Pfizer perceived the Bextra matter as an
incredibly serious one.

Two years later, with Bextra, the shell company once again pleaded guilty. It
was, in effect, Pfizer’s imaginary friend stepping up to take the rap.

“It is true that if a company is created to take a criminal plea, but it’s
just a shell, the impact of an exclusion is minimal or nonexistent,” Morris
said.

Prosecutors say there was no viable alternative.

“If we prosecute Pfizer, they get excluded,” said Mike Loucks, the federal
prosecutor who oversaw the investigation. “A lot of the people who work for the
company who haven’t engaged in criminal activity would get hurt.”

Did the punishment fit the crime? Pfizer says yes.

It paid nearly $1.2 billion in a criminal fine for Bextra, the largest fine

the federal government has ever collected.

It paid a billion dollars more to settle a batch of civil suits — although it
denied wrongdoing — on allegations that it illegally promoted 12 other
drugs.

To prevent it from happening again, Pfizer has set up what it calls
“leading-edge” systems to spot signs of illegal promotion by closely monitoring
sales reps and tracking prescription sales.

It’s not entirely voluntary. Pfizer had to sign a corporate integrity
agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services. For the next five
years, it requires Pfizer to disclose future payments to doctors and top
executives to sign off personally that the company is obeying the law.

Pfizer says the company has learned its lesson.

But after years of overseeing similar cases against other major drug
companies, even Loucks, isn’t sure $2 billion in penalties is a deterrent when
the profits from illegal promotion can be so large.

“I worry that the money is so great,” he said, that dealing with the
Department of Justice may be “just of a cost of doing business.”

Paragraphs two and three read: “The attorney for Coram resident Brandon Hampson says he plans to argue that his client became violent and beat Lisa Essling on Aug. 25, 2006, because he stopped taking the popular antidepressant Zoloft days before the attack.”

“Nassau County District Court Judge Rhonda Fischer said Friday that she will allow a defense witness to testify that withdrawl from the antidepressant can cause a person to become aggressive.”

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) A Long Island judge has said she will allow a man accused of punching and kicking his former girlfriend to use the so-called “Zoloft defense.”

The attorney for Coram resident Brandon Hampson says he plans to argue that his client became violent and beat Lisa Essling on Aug. 25, 2006, because he stopped taking the popular antidepressant Zoloft days before the attack.

Nassau County District Court Judge Rhonda Fischer said Friday that she will allow a defense witness to testify that withdrawl from the antidepressant can cause a person to become aggressive.

Prosecutors say they strongly disagree with the court’s decision.

Zoloft manufacturer Pfizer Inc. has said there’s not evidence to suggest that discontinuing the drug can cause violent behavior.

___

Information from: Newsday, http://www.newsday.com

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Paragraphs two and three read: “The attorney for Coram resident Brandon Hampson says he plans to argue that his client became violent and beat Lisa Essling on Aug. 25, 2006, because he stopped taking the popular antidepressant Zoloft days before the attack.”

“Nassau County District Court Judge Rhonda Fischer said Friday that she will allow a defense witness to testify that withdrawl from the antidepressant can cause a person to become aggressive.”

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) A Long Island judge has said she will allow a man accused of punching and kicking his former girlfriend to use the so-called “Zoloft defense.”

The attorney for Coram resident Brandon Hampson says he plans to argue that his client became violent and beat Lisa Essling on Aug. 25, 2006, because he stopped taking the popular antidepressant Zoloft days before the attack.

Nassau County District Court Judge Rhonda Fischer said Friday that she will allow a defense witness to testify that withdrawl from the antidepressant can cause a person to become aggressive.

Prosecutors say they strongly disagree with the court’s decision.

Zoloft manufacturer Pfizer Inc. has said there’s not evidence to suggest that discontinuing the drug can cause violent behavior.

___

Information from: Newsday, http://www.newsday.com

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

It’s now August of 2009, just past a year after being discharged from the psychiatric hospital. I’ve been off Zoloft since March 2009 and am finally feeling like a human being again. Fortunately, I don’t seem to have any neurological damage, memory impairment, concentration troubles or other lasting symptoms.

I’m 48 years old and my introduction to Zoloft began when I was 34. I’ve since learned that the symptoms of fatigue and difficulty sleeping and concentrating that I was having at that time were due to over-work and adrenal exhaustion. That doctor had me fill out a questionnaire and then spent maybe 10 minutes with me before giving me free samples of Zoloft. Had I known then, what I know now?… And I must forgive the past and not dwell on it in order to heal.

In June of 2008, my nutritionist who was treating me with amino acid therapy took me off Zoloft abruptly. This caused me to go into a manic state, which I had never experienced before. It also brought up a lot of anger. After about a ten days, my wife and I figured out it was the discontinuation of Zoloft that was causing all these problems, so I went back on it.

Because of all my weird behavior, I had left the house and was staying at a hotel. My wife got my sister involved and she stayed with me for a couple of days but didn’t bring along her bi-polar medications. I remember distinctly the night of July 13th: I slept from about 9pm to 5am, went for a work out and did my meditation. I was definitely stabilizing.

Then my sister took me into town, my wife and I had another fight and, in my anger and frustration, I broke the rear view mirror off my sister’s car. This caused her to freak out. We had picked up her meds and agreed to go back to the hotel and take a nap. I later learned that she had already called the police.

When we arrived at the hotel, the cops came to my door (hands on their holstered guns) and ordered me out of the car. They hand cuffed me, searched me and put me in the squad car. Then, as I later learned, my sister and wife had a discussion about “wether or not to tell the police that I had threatened her.” My sister told the police a lie, that I had threatened her with a gun and I was hauled off to the ER where I was doped up with an injection.

Later I was taken to the psychiatric hospital where I was asked to sign a bunch of forms and “releases.” How absurd! I was only semi-consicouss at the time.

At the hospital I was taken off the Zoloft and diagnosed as bi-polar. Of course, this through me into another withdrawal episode and made me manic and aggressive again.

I want to point out that I have no history of violence, have never been in any sort of brawl, have never been arrested, have never before been put in handcuffs, no DUI tickets and even a clean driving record.

The hospital changed my drugs every few days. Zyprexa, Lithium, Depakote, Abilify, etc. After 20 days, I was discharged. The insurance and family money was expended, so I was well, right?

Far from it: My wife filed for divorce. I lost access to my home, which was also my office. She cleaned out the company bank account, etc.

Eventually, I lost pretty much everything and got saddled with all our debt and received none of the assets due to a waiver of “appearance” I signed 3 days out of the hospital. We had agreed on a negotiated, one lawyer divorce, but I ended up getting totally screwed.

Over the past 12 months, I’ve lived in 5 states. I’ve had a couple of “room and board” jobs and stayed with friends. Fortunately, my mother has been able to give me some financial support, so I haven’t been without the basic necessities of life. Through a friend, I found Ann Blake-Tracy and she helped me understand what happened to me and gave me phone support while I finished the detox from the Zoloft these past few months.

Now, I’m well enough that I’m looking for a job again so I can restart my life.

I’m certainly not bipolar. What a bunch of total bullshit. All I’m taking right now is 0.5 mg of Klonopin (Clonazepam) twice a day to help with anxiety and sleep.

I used to have a pretty normal life. I made a six figure income. My wife (18 years of marriage) didn’t have to work. We had a nice house and the swimming pool I had wanted since I was a child. Now, all that’s gone. All because of a stupid little pill and all the people that don’t know what the hell their doing with all these powerful drugs.

During the 13 years I was on SSRI Antidepressants, I saw several different psychiatrists and doctors. They experimented on me with many different drugs: Effexor, Celexa, Abilify, Alprazolam, Clonazepam (Klonopin), Depakote, Lunesta, Trazodone, Xanax, Zyprexa and of course Zoloft (Sertraline).

Of all the drugs, Lamictal was the worst. Once the doctor increased the dose from 50 mg a day to 200 mg a day (I’ve since found out that is NOT an increase in accordance with the manufacturers instructions) I had horrible, disgusting nightmares every single night and became highly suicidal. This happened in October of 2008, and freaked me out so much that I went back on Zoloft and some other drugs so that I could get my sleep.

During all these crazy times, I have survived because of my spiritual faith, the generosity of my mother and some good friends and Divine Grace. Also, because of the various nutritionists I’ve had over the years, I’ve learned how to eat well and take the right supplements. Cenitol by metagenics is magnesium supplement that has been especially helpful with relaxing me and helping me sleep. I order that online at: http://www.janethumphrey.meta-ehealth.com.

Lastly, I would like to mention that none of these doctors I saw gave me any sort of what I would call informed consent. I was never informed about all the adverse reactions and side-effects that I’ve now learned were well known back then. None of the doctors explained that, according to their view of brain chemical imbalance, I would need to stay on these SSRI Antidepressants for the rest of my life. None of the doctors EVER explained discontinuation syndrome etc, etc, etc.

These drugs manufactures and the doctors that push these drugs are all involved in a horrible scam, the tragic consequences of which yet to become fully manifest.

My intense gratitude to Ann Blake-Tracy and the good work she is doing!

Note from Ann Blake-Tracy: After researching and warning for two decades that this crisis with alcohol consumption would come, I can tell you the reason so many women are now drinking is because they are the main ones taking antidepressants which in turn cause overwhelming cravings for alcohol. And it has long been known that women suffer more adverse reactions to antidepressants than men do.

But why cravings for alcohol? These drugs drop the blood sugar causing cravings for sugar and/or alcohol and NutraSweet. Sugar and alcohol initially bring the blood sugar up quickly causing one to instinctively reach for them in a “self medicating” way because they quickly address the low blood sugar level. The problem with doing this is that both substances then drop the sugar levels even lower than before thus producing a vicious cycle of craving more and more sugar and/or alcohol. (To read the science behind this go to www.drugawareness.org)

Another aspect to this increased use in alcohol being tied to antidepressant use is the fact that antidepressants produce mania or Bipolar Disorder so frequently. (See the research article we posted earlier this week showing that 81% of those diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder have been found to have previously taken antidepressants or Ritalin.)

Initially doctors refused to prescribe the first SSRI, Prozac, because of its strong potential to chemically induce mania. There are several types of mania that are recognized. Many have never even heard of these types of mania. And most do not think of these various types of mania when they hear the term Bipolar. Let’s list just a few to shed some additional light on this drinking problem women, who have always taken more antidepressants than men, have developed since these drugs have become so widespread in use.

So there it is in black and white plain as day – one of the forms of mania, dipsomania, is described as an “uncontrollable urge to drink alcohol.” Could it be any clearer?

Learn More

And look at one of the comments from the article below:

“Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men,” said Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Does that not describe manic behavior – “empowered” or all powerful with grandiose thoughts of one’s self and “uninhibited”? Those have always been earmarks warning of mania.

Hopefully this news about women and drinking will FINALLY wake America up to what first caught my attention with the use of antidepressants – the OVERWHELMING out-of-character cravings for alcohol that is produced by these drugs. (Find much more additional information on this subject at www.drugawareness.org)

NEW YORK – It seemed too horrendous even to imagine. But the case of the mother who caused a deadly wrong-way crash while drunk and stoned is part of a disturbing trend: Women in the U.S. are drinking more, and drunken-driving arrests among women are rising rapidly while falling among men.

And some of those women, as in the New York case, are getting behind the wheel with kids in the back.

Men still drink more than women and are responsible for more drunken-driving cases. But the gap is narrowing, and among the reasons cited are that women are feeling greater pressures at work and home, they are driving more, and they are behaving more recklessly.

“Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men,” said Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Another possible reason cited for the rising arrests: Police are less likely to let women off the hook these days.

Nationwide, the number of women arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs was 28.8 percent higher in 2007 than it was in 1998, while the number of men arrested was 7.5 percent lower, according to FBI figures that cover about 56 percent of the country. (Despite the incomplete sample, Alfred Blumstein, a Carnegie Mellon University criminologist, said the trend probably holds true for the country as a whole.)

“Women are picking up some of the dangerously bad habits of men,” said Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

In New York’s Westchester County, where Diane Schuler’s crash killed her and seven other people last month, the number of women arrested for drunken driving is up 2 percent this year, and officers said they are noticing more women with children in the back seat.

“We realized for the last two to three years, the pattern of more female drivers, particularly mothers with kids in their cars, getting arrested for drunk driving,” said Tom Meier, director of Drug Prevention and Stop DWI for the county.

In one case there, a woman out clubbing with her teenage daughter was sent to prison for causing a wrong-way crash that killed her daughter’s friend.

Another woman was charged with driving drunk after witnesses said she had been drinking all day before going to pick up her children at school. Authorities said the children were scared during the ride, and once they got home, they jumped out of the car, ran to a neighbor’s house and told an adult, who called police. The mother lay passed out in the car, and police said her blood alcohol level was 0.27 percent — more than three times the legal limit.

In California, based on the same FBI figures, women accounted for 18.8 percent of all DUI arrests in 2007, up from 13.5 percent in 1998, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Nearly 250 youngsters were killed in alcohol-related crashes in the U.S. in 2007, and most of them were passengers in the car with the impaired driver, according to the National Highway Safety Administration.

“Drunk drivers often carry their kids with them,” said MADD’s Hurley. “It’s the ultimate form of child abuse.”

Arrests of drunken mothers with children in the car remain rare, but police officers can generally list a few.

In the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia‘s daughter was stopped by police after she pulled away from a McDonald’s with three of her kids in the car. She pleaded guilty to drunken driving and was sentenced to 18 months of court supervision.

Sgt. Glen Williams of the Creve Coeur, Mo., police department recalls stopping a suspected drunken driver on her way to pick up two preschoolers.

Sometime later, “she told me it actually changed her life, getting arrested,” he said. “She was forced to get help and realized she’d had a problem.”

The increase in arrests comes as women are drinking excessively more than in the past.

One federal study found that the number of women who reported abusing alcohol (having at least four drinks in a day) rose from 1.5 percent to 2.6 percent over the 10-year period that ended in 2002. For women ages 30 to 44, Schuler’s age group, the number more than doubled, from 1.5 percent to 3.3 percent.

The problem has caught the attention of the federal government. The Transportation Department’s annual crackdown on drunken driving, which begins later this month, will focus on women.

“There’s the impression out there that drunk driving is strictly a male issue, and it is certainly not the case,” said Rae Tyson, spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “There are a number of parts of the country where, in fact, the majority of impaired drivers involved in fatal crashes are female.”

Schuler’s relatives have denied she was an alcoholic and said they were shocked to learn of her drug and alcohol use before the July 26 crash. The wreck, about 35 miles north of New York City, killed Schuler, her 2-year-old daughter, her three nieces and three men in an oncoming SUV she hit with her minivan. Schuler’s 5-year-old son survived his injuries.

Schuler, a cable company executive, could have had a drinking problem that her family didn’t know about, said Elaine Ducharme, a psychologist in Connecticut who has seen more excessive drinking, overeating, smoking and drug abuse during the recession.

Unlike men, women tend to drink at home and alone, which allows them to conceal a problem more easily.

Because of this, they seek treatment less often than men, and when they do, it is at a later stage, often when something catastrophic has already happened, said Dr. Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.

“Our society has taught us that women have an extra burden to be the perfect mothers and perfect wives and perfect daughters and perfect everything,” Levounis said. “They tend to go to great lengths to keep everything intact from an external viewpoint while internally, they are in ruins.”

In the current recession, women’s incomes have become more important because so many men have lost their jobs, experts say. Men are helping out more at home, but working mothers still have the bulk of the child rearing responsibilities.

“Because of that, they have a bigger burden then most men do,” said clinical psychologist Carol Goldman. “We have to look at the pressures on women these days. They have to be the supermom.”

And just becoming a parent doesn’t mean people will stop using drugs or alcohol, Ducharme said: “If you have a real addictive personality, just having a child isn’t going to make the difference.”

___

Associated Press writers Solvej Schou in Los Angeles, Mark Tarm in Chicago and Betsy Taylor in St. Louis contributed to this report.

By Anne McIlroy
As written in The Globe and Mail (www.globeandmail.com)

When Matt Miller’s family moved to a bigger house in a new neighbourhood in Kansas City, Mo., the athletic 13-year-old with thick blond hair found that he couldn’t penetrate the cliques at his new school. He was a nobody, an outsider.

“He was angry at us, he was angry at the school, his grades suffered. He wasn’t himself,” said his father, Mark Miller.

The boy’s teachers recommended that he see a psychiatrist, who prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant in the same chemical family as Prozac. The doctor said it would help Matt’s mood, make him feel better about himself. The boy started taking the pills and seemed to be in good spirits for a few days.

But then he began showing signs of intense nervousness and agitation. He couldn’t sit still, his father remembers. He kept kicking people under the table. His eyes were sunken and he couldn’t sleep, yet he had a restless energy.

After six days on the drug, on July 28, 1997, Matt hanged himself in his bedroom closet.

“Suicide always takes you by surprise, but no one could have imagined that Matt would have done that,” Miller said in an interview. “There was no previous attempt, no serious threat of it, no note, no premeditation. “It was a very impulsive act I am convinced was brought about by the stimulant nature of the drug.”

Miller has launched a lawsuit against Pfizer Inc., which makes Zoloft. He is one of about 200 people who have sued — so far unsuccessfully — the makers of Prozac and similar products. The plaintiffs contend that the drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, caused their loved ones to kill themselves and, in some cases, hurt or kill others as well. One of the few cases to go to trial so far was that of William Forsyth, a 63-year-old wealthy Hawaii businessman who stabbed to death his wife of 37 years and then killed himself in 1993. At the time, he had been taking Prozac for 11 days for panic attacks.

In 1999, a jury in the civil lawsuit cleared Prozac of liability in the deaths. Forsyth’s adult children began another suit last year accusing Eli Lilly and Co., the maker of the drug, of covering up damaging details about the antidepressant.

Chief among the scientific experts who have given people, including Miller and Forsyth’s children, reason to believe that a link may exist between antidepressants and suicide is Dr. David Healy, whom Miller has engaged as an expert witness in his suit.

Healy is a well-known British psychiatrist who argues that Prozac and similar drugs may trigger suicide in some patients, and that there should be warning labels on the products.

To Miller, Healy is a hero, a crusading scientist with the guts and credibility to challenge the powerful, multinational drug companies in an era in which many researchers and institutions depend on them for funding. But discussing the down side of Prozac does not appear to have been a good career move. Healy’s blunt expression of his views may have cost him a job at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, a teaching hospital associated with the University of Toronto. The centre had been recruiting him for months, but last year rescinded his written job offer after he gave a speech warning that Prozac may trigger suicide in some patients.

Eli Lilly Canada Inc. is a major corporate donor to the centre, but university and hospital officials say their decision had nothing to do with wanting to please the drug company or to avoid damaging future fundraising efforts. They say their reasons are confidential. Healy says the only explanation he was offered was that his lecture “solidified” the view that he was not a good fit.

For Eli Lilly’s part, it points out that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel of experts voted six to three against requiring Prozac to carry a suicide-risk warning label. In September of 1991, the FDA concluded that there was no credible evidence of a causal link between the use of antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, and suicides or violent behaviour. And a paper published in March of 1991 by Jerrold Rosenbaum of Massachusetts General Hospital found that patients on Prozac were not prone to suicide any more than patients on other medication.

Eli Lilly said, in a written response to questions from The Globe and Mail: “There is, to the contrary, published scientific evidence showing that Prozac and medicines like it actually protect against such behaviour — reducing aggressive and suicidal thoughts and behaviour.”

When Prozac was introduced in the late 1980s, it was billed as a wonder drug that could combat depression with far fewer risks than previous medications, including the danger of an overdose or problems when mixed with alcohol. Prozac and drugs like it — Zoloft, Paxil and Luvox — were said to help with emotional limitations such as low self-esteem and fear of rejection. Prozac was a commercial as well as a medical miracle, sold to an estimated 40 million people worldwide since it hit the market.

The drug boosts levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which seems to improve the mood of patients. But within a few years of Prozac’s launch came hints that it brought out a dark side in a small fraction of users. Martin Teicher, a researcher at Harvard University, published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1990 that discussed six cases in which patients became intensely preoccupied with suicide after taking the drug. Other scientists also found a potential link between Prozac and suicide.

Healy says in one of his published papers that Eli Lilly scientists collaborated with the FDA on designing an experiment that would measure how serious the problem was, but they then decided against conducting it. Instead, in 1991, Eli Lilly published an analysis of data taken from existing trials. Its conclusion? There was no increase of suicidal thoughts or suicide among depressed patients taking Prozac.

But Healy says in the paper that data from only about one-eighth of the patients in the clinical trials were included. No mention was made that some had been prescribed a sedative that may have alleviated an intense nervous state that can lead to suicide, which is called akathisia, he says. The analysis also did not point out that 5 per cent of patients dropped out of the studies because they were anxious and agitated and may have been suffering from akathisia, Healy says.

Another document, dated Nov. 13, 1990, shows that company scientists were pressured by executives to soften physicians’ reports of suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts, according to Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen, who obtained the document and is author of the book Prozac Backlash. Additional evidence about the potential risks can be found in the patent for a second-generation Prozac pill, which Eli Lilly has licensed. The patent says the new and improved Prozac would decrease side effects including: “nervousness, anxiety, and insomnia,” as well as “inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation.”

But at the same time, Eli Lilly says these symptoms are not associated in any significant way with taking the current version of Prozac. The new Prozac — which incidentally was co-developed by Teicher, one of the drug’s early critics — isn’t yet on the market, Last year, Healy published a study in the journal Primary Care Psychiatry that said two of 20 healthy volunteers taking an antidepressant in the same family as Prozac reported feeling suicidal.

But by his calculations, probably 40,000 people have committed suicide while on Prozac since its launch, above and beyond the number who would have taken their own lives if their condition had been left untreated.

The German government now requires warning labels, and Britain is considering them. Canada and the United States do not. Healy says he is not opposed to Prozac and thinks that it can do a lot of good. But he says it is unethical and irresponsible not to warn doctors about the potential dangers, and believes Eli Lilly chose not to do so to maximize profits.

He says family doctors seem to be increasingly prescribing Prozac and other antidepressants to children and now to women complaining of severe premenstrual symptoms, yet patients in North America do not have to be told about the potential risks.

Eli Lilly and the other drug companies argue that depression, not antidepressants, are to blame for suicides. Pfizer is trying to have Healy barred from testifying in the Miller case, questioning his credibility as an expert witness.

So what are Canadian consumers to think? Jacques Bradwejn, chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Ottawa, says he has reviewed the literature and agrees with the FDA and Eli Lilly that there is no evidence that Prozac and similar drugs cause more suicides than would have occurred if patients had not been treated.

But a small number of patients — even as many as 1 per cent — may fall into a nervous state that could trigger suicide, he said, adding that more research is needed to better understand the problem.

While Prozac may be overprescribed for patients who are not truly ill, Bradwejn worries that the message that the Prozac is dangerous will do more harm than good for those who are moderately to severely depressed. “If the message is too alarmist, it could have a very negative effect on Canadians.”

DEPTHS OF DESPAIR

A study by Dr. David Healy found that two of 20 healthy volunteers taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor in the same family as Prozac reported suicidal feelings. This is the story of one of those people, a 30-year-old woman who didn’t know what drug she was taking, as recorded in the study. “On the Friday she telephoned early in the morning, distressed and tearful from the previous night. Her conversation was garbled. She described almost going out and killing herself. . .

“The night previously she had felt complete blackness all around her. . . . She felt hopeless and alone. It seemed that all she could do was to follow a thought that had been planted in her brain by some alien force. “She suddenly decided she should go and throw herself in front of a car, that this was the only answer. It was as if there was nothing out there apart from the car. . . . She didn’t think of her partner or child. She was walking out the door when the phone went. This stopped the tunnel of suicidal ideation.

“She later became distraught at what she had nearly done and guilty that she had not thought of her family.”

Below is a the drug manufactures BEST GUESS as to how SSRI antidepressants work in your brain. They fully admit that they really don’t know how they work. However, we maintain that the positive effects that patients report come from the stimulant, amphetamine-like, nature of these mind-altering drugs.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors do exactly that: Inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, thus leaving excess serotonin which allows this stimulation to continue. It has long been known that inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin will produce depression, suicide, violence, psychosis, mania, cravings for alcohol and other drugs, reckless driving, etc. [See full list of reactions below]

WARNING: Anesthetics can also fall into this group as well as drugs used for other purposes. Always check to see what the mechanism of action is in a drug before combining it with another serotonergic agent or using it soon after the use of a serotonergic agent because the combination of two can cause the potentially fatal reaction known as Serotonin Syndrome. As the main function of serotonin is constriction of smooth muscle tissue, Serotonin Syndrome produces death via multiple organ failure.

“Psychedelic agents mimic the effects of serotonin.”

The brain chemical these drugs increase, serotonin, is the same brain chemical that LSD, PCP and other psychedelic drugs mimic in order to produce their hallucinogenic effects. And remember that psychedelic agents are “a class of compounds with no demonstrated therapeutic use, a history of extensive abuse, and the ability to provoke psychosis. Yet many brain researchers value the psychedelic agents above any of the other psychoactive drugs” because “the research into psychedelic drugs has already enriched our understanding of how the brain regulates behavior.” (Dr. Solomon Snyder, DRUGS AND THE BRAIN). Just how much will these brain researchers learn from our experience with these drugs designed to specifically increase serotonin, the same brain chemical the psychedelic agents mimic to produce their effects?

We know that these drugs interfere with serotonin metabolism (demonstrated by levels of the serotonin metabolite 5HIAA). It is not serotonin that is low in these disorders, it is this by-product 5HIAA, which indicates the level of serotonin metabolism, that is low in depression, suicide, etc. Yet as serotonin (5HT) goes up serotonin metabolism (5HIAA) generally comes down. We already have studies demonstrating at what percentage each of these drugs increase 5HT and decrease 5HIAA. Here are the results of elevated levels of serotonin (5HT) and decreased levels of serotonin metabolism (5HIAA):

autism (a self-centered or self-focused mental state with no basis in reality)

Alzheimer’s disease

old age

anorexia

constriction of the blood vessels

blood clotting

constriction of bronchials and other physical effects

Lower 5HIAA (serotonin metabolism) levels:

suicide (especially violent suicide)

arson

violent crime

insomnia

depression

alcohol abuse

impulsive acts with no concern for punishment

reckless driving

dependence upon various substances

bulimia

multiple suicide attempts

hostility and more contact with police

exhibitionism

arguments with spouses, friends and relatives

obsessive compulsive behavior

impaired employment due to hostility, etc.

All are exactly what patients and their families have continued to report to be their experience on these drugs since Prozac was introduced! These individuals are frantically searching for answers while this research sits right under our noses. Although this is a totally different picture than pharmaceutical marketing departments would have us believe, marketing claims and reality rarely have much in common.

Researchers tell us that five, ten or twenty years later it is not uncommon to find we have another thalidomide on our hands. Raising 5HT (serotonin) and lowering 5HIAA (serotonin metabolism) in such a high number of people can produce very serious, extensive and long term problems for all of society. Even more frightening for the future of our society is the rapidly rising and widely accepted practice of prescribing these drugs to small children and adolescents. This crucial medical research must be addressed openly, without delay, rather than remain buried in seldom read medical research documents as has been the case in the past with other mind-altering medications, once thought to be safe, which were subsequently prohibited by law.

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